Licensing transition: opposing points of view

[Milos Rancic-2]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 10:41 PM, Mike Godwin <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I disagree that there is a "huge" probability of legal exposure with regard
> to this question.  I follow moral-rights jurisprudence reasonably closely,
> and I have yet to see any reason to believe that the risk of legal action
> against the Wikimedia Foundation (or anyone else) is going to be increased
> by the new licensing scheme. (Indeed, if the probability were huge, we would
> already have seen such cases, since the GFDL prescriptions are more exacting
> than the CC-BY-SA prescriptions.)

Free content became important legal form of content since Wikipedia.
And we are leaving the time when Wikipedia was a miracle with extreme
amount of good faith around it. Also, all contributors were us and we
don't want to sue us.

As Wikipedia is becoming more and more a regular part of our
civilization, we may expect more and more regular behavior. We already
had malicious legal attacks in UK, Germany and France (I remember
those three issues). We had a number of informal settlements, even in
Serbia (a relatively famous person, a daughter of famous Yugoslavian
director and translator, wanted money for some quotes at Bosnian
Wikiquote).

By building a position with significant holes, and attribution issue
is still a significant hole, we are making unsustainable construction.
If we have, let's say, 10.000.000 of contributors and 1% of them
(100.000) is not happy with Wikipedia because of any reason and 1% of
them (1000) want to sue WMF or whoever and 1% of them can do it, we'll
have 10 big problems. We may fail in just 10% of the cases and we'll
suffer from significant consequences.

> I'm known to be risk-averse with regard to legal exposure for the
> Foundation, but I am not terribly troubled by the prospect you raise here.
> Moral-rights doctrine is grounded in assumptions about authorship that don't
> map well to massive collaborative enterprises like Wikipedia. Explaining to
> a court how we do handle attribution in the context of such enterprises --
> including the fact that we make an effort to do reasonable attribution --
> should convince most reasonable courts that the purposes for which
> moral-rights doctrine was invented are being served.  I lose sleep over
> other kinds of legal issues relating to Wikimedia projects, but not this
> one.

Note that the whole idea related to the license migration and relaxing
attribution is because of content reusing, and just in small part
because of Wikipedia itself (while I see benefits for Wikibooks and
Wikiversity, I don't see any significant benefit for Wikipedia). Also,
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are attributing all
contributors.

So, reusers may be sued for plagiarism ("Copyright Me and Wikipedia
authors", even "Me" contributed much less significant material than 20
Wikipedia authors). After the first couple of such processes Wikipedia
recommendations would loose any credibility. (And you should know
better if it would be possible that WMF would be sued for misleading
recommendations.)

BTW, it won't be an issue if we are living in a world without
bourgeois egotism :) But, we aren't living in such world.

Technically, our biggest problem may be removing 100.000 edits. And it
is possible to be done without endangering the project.

But, we may suffer from harder consequences: If someone insists to be
attributed and we say that that person has to be attributed, others
will follow that example. This is especially true for projects out of
English language ones. English Wikipedia, for example, has large basis
of contributors who are contributing there because of free knowledge.
Other projects may have significantly different contributor basis.
Around a year ago around five very active contributors (of ~40 of very
active contributors in that time, if I remember well) left Serbian
Wikipedia. They made another project and they chose CC-BY-NC-ND
license there. If they would be at the project at the time when the
first contributor demands and gets attribution, I guarantee that those
five contributors would be the first who would follow that
contributor. In that situation I know the next ~10 contributors who
would demand attribution just because previous five got... And we
would end with one of two options: (1) general rule that all authors
have to be attributed or (2) that 90% of authors say that they have to
be attributed. So, again, useless recommendations with transitional
mess.

Note, again, that this is not an issue directly related to
Wiki[pm]edia, but to reusing of Wiki[pm]edia content.

And about moral rights doctrine: If it is not scaled well to massive
collaborative enterprises, the answer is not not to address them at
all, but to scale it. (I am talking again something which I don't
want... I want moral rights not to be addressed, but are you sure that
it will work?)

BUT, if you think that there is no reasonable threat to be sued for
"misleading recommendations", it doesn't cost a lot to try that way.
Fixing credibility is much less dangerous than loosing two years
budget.

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[Mike Godwin-2]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Milos Rancic <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
> As Wikipedia is becoming more and more a regular part of our
> civilization, we may expect more and more regular behavior. We already
> had malicious legal attacks in UK, Germany and France (I remember
> those three issues).


I'm aware of these, and other legal threats as well.

By building a position with significant holes, and attribution issue
> is still a significant hole, we are making unsustainable construction.


My assessment is different from yours.

>
> If we have, let's say, 10.000.000 of contributors and 1% of them
> (100.000) is not happy with Wikipedia because of any reason and 1% of
> them (1000) want to sue WMF or whoever and 1% of them can do it, we'll
> have 10 big problems. We may fail in just 10% of the cases and we'll
> suffer from significant consequences.


This is a version of Pascal's Wager.  I don't really believe, however, the
risk is even as high as you suggest here.  We'll be fine.



> After the first couple of such processes Wikipedia
> recommendations would loose any credibility.


I don't consider this a significant risk.


> BUT, if you think that there is no reasonable threat to be sued for
> "misleading recommendations", it doesn't cost a lot to try that way.
> Fixing credibility is much less dangerous than loosing two years
> budget.


I don't think there's any reasonable threat of this sort.


--Mike
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[Thomas Dalton]

2009/3/20 Mike Godwin <[hidden email]>:
>> If we have, let's say, 10.000.000 of contributors and 1% of them
>> (100.000) is not happy with Wikipedia because of any reason and 1% of
>> them (1000) want to sue WMF or whoever and 1% of them can do it, we'll
>> have 10 big problems. We may fail in just 10% of the cases and we'll
>> suffer from significant consequences.
>
>
> This is a version of Pascal's Wager.  I don't really believe, however, the
> risk is even as high as you suggest here.  We'll be fine.

Pascal's Wager involves infinite gain/loss - this is just basic risk
analysis and has nothing at all to do with Pascal's Wager.

I think the percentages given as plausible, but do we really have 10
million contributors? The English Wikipedia apparently has 9,237,657
registered users, but I believe a very large proportion of them have
never made an edit, an even larger proportion won't have any edits
which still exist in articles. I find it very unlikely that there are
10 million contributors, even across all Wikimedia projects, that have
copyrightable contributions. (Of course, I'm ignoring anons - I don't
see how they can realistically sue for copyright infringement.) So I
think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.

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[Mike Godwin-2]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Thomas Dalton <[hidden email]>wrote:

>
> Pascal's Wager involves infinite gain/loss - this is just basic risk
> analysis and has nothing at all to do with Pascal's Wager.


It's true that Pascal's own version of Pascal's Wager involves the risk of
infinite loss, but it's commonly used among modern philosophers (and lawyers
and others) to refer to scenarios regarding small probabilities of very
large losses (since in the real world we humans mostly don't deal with
infinite losses or gains).  If I tell you there's only a 1 percent change of
a 10-trillion-dollar personal loss (for example), the same paralyzing logic
of Pascal's Wager applies, even though 10 trillion dollars isn't an infinite
number of dollars.  (And that's all I'll say here about Pascal's Wager on
this list -- if you want to discuss it privately, I'm happy to continue that
off-topic discussion, since I've been interested in the subject for almost
three decades.)

So I
> think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
> than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.
>

Fortunately for legal risk assessment, there's no need for risks to be zero
in order for them to be judged insignificant.


--Mike
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[Erik Moeller-4]

2009/3/20 Nikola Smolenski <[hidden email]>:
>> The fact that they may or may not be logged in is completely
>> irrelevant if the terms and conditions clarify that their username has
>> nothing to do with the option of supplying an Original Author name as
>
> But the terms and conditions do not clarify that, anywhere.

So let's step back for a second. There is a claim that the legal code
of CC-BY-SA cannot be reconciled with the notion of attributing via
URL-linkback only. Do you agree that this claim is false? If the claim
is false, then surely it is possible to create terms and conditions
for a website under which authors contribute under such a model. If it
is possible, then the final question is whether the current proposed
terms for the edit page satisfy those conditions. I contend that they
do, because they are sufficiently clear about the intended
consequences (we don't need to spell out in detail how the terms and
conditions relate to the license, as long as it's possible for them to
relate to the license in a way that is logical and consistent).
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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[Milos Rancic-2]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Thomas Dalton <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I think the percentages given as plausible, but do we really have 10
> million contributors? The English Wikipedia apparently has 9,237,657
> registered users, but I believe a very large proportion of them have
> never made an edit, an even larger proportion won't have any edits
> which still exist in articles. I find it very unlikely that there are
> 10 million contributors, even across all Wikimedia projects, that have
> copyrightable contributions. (Of course, I'm ignoring anons - I don't
> see how they can realistically sue for copyright infringement.) So I
> think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
> than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.

We'll have. If you start with just 100.000 contributors and raise
percentage to 10% (which may be reasonable too), you'll end with 100
cases.

But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.

The only issue which stays is related to users which declare that they
want to be attributed: Would we allow that? If yes, is there any plan
("yes" is good answer enough) how to deal with making attribution
recommendations useless? If no, is it possible it legally?

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[Thomas Dalton]

2009/3/21 Milos Rancic <[hidden email]>:

> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Thomas Dalton <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> I think the percentages given as plausible, but do we really have 10
>> million contributors? The English Wikipedia apparently has 9,237,657
>> registered users, but I believe a very large proportion of them have
>> never made an edit, an even larger proportion won't have any edits
>> which still exist in articles. I find it very unlikely that there are
>> 10 million contributors, even across all Wikimedia projects, that have
>> copyrightable contributions. (Of course, I'm ignoring anons - I don't
>> see how they can realistically sue for copyright infringement.) So I
>> think the expected number of problematic cases is significantly less
>> than 1, but it certainly isn't 0.
>
> We'll have. If you start with just 100.000 contributors and raise
> percentage to 10% (which may be reasonable too), you'll end with 100
> cases.

10% doesn't sound at all reasonable to me.

> But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
> more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.

Only the last percentage is really a legal prediction, the rest are
more predictions of human behaviour. That said, the last percentage is
probably the only one that anyone can give anything more than a wild
guess at (which is why I didn't choose any stronger words than
"plausible" to describe them).

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[geni]

2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <[hidden email]>:

> So let's step back for a second. There is a claim that the legal code
> of CC-BY-SA cannot be reconciled with the notion of attributing via
> URL-linkback only. Do you agree that this claim is false? If the claim
> is false, then surely it is possible to create terms and conditions
> for a website under which authors contribute under such a model. If it
> is possible, then the final question is whether the current proposed
> terms for the edit page satisfy those conditions. I contend that they
> do, because they are sufficiently clear about the intended
> consequences (we don't need to spell out in detail how the terms and
> conditions relate to the license, as long as it's possible for them to
> relate to the license in a way that is logical and consistent).

Again you miss the point. Wikipedia has 293,896,584 edits that were
not released under those TOS.

--
geni

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[Erik Moeller-4]

2009/3/20 geni <[hidden email]>:
> Your suggestion that wikipedia:copyrights has any baring on what
> people have agreed to have done with their work simply doesn't hold
> water.

Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back
credit aren't irreconcilable after all. Now we're apparently moving on
to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining
what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time
on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from
every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use. But
even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't
support rigorous author attribution:

1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
edits under the GFDL;
2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
give credit on the page title;
3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;
4) The act of repeatedly contributing to Wikipedia under the GFDL can
be argued to constitute the release from attribution which the GFDL
allows for.

The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
attribution, as I've noted before. That's evident because the GFDL
explicitly places reasonable limitations on the extent of author
credit, to prevent the kinds of excessive bylines that we've been
talking about. It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
created without a page history while still giving author credit. In
the context of a wiki, change histories were clearly not designed for
purposes of author credit, as they are an incredibly annoying tool
when you actually want to use them for this purpose.

I'm not making this argument: I am saying that we have established,
through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline. What is
and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license. But the
experience of contributing under a literal reading of the license
alone doesn't support a claim to require stronger author attribution
than what we're proposing, or even any author attribution at all.
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Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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[Milos Rancic-2]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:57 AM, Thomas Dalton <[hidden email]> wrote:
> 10% doesn't sound at all reasonable to me.

In one of the previous emails I described that 5 very active
contributors were not happy with the situation at sr.wp at the time
when there were ~40 very active contributors. I don't think that sr.wp
had much more than 100 important contributors and I may count 10
unhappy. So, the first 10% have some empirical grounds. Actually, even
the next 10% have empirical grounds: I know the person who would sue
sr.wp community if they can. Fortunately, the next 10% are 0.1.

>> But, it is reasonable to suppose that Mike's legal predictions are
>> more relevant than mine :) So, legal part is no issue anymore for me.
>
> Only the last percentage is really a legal prediction, the rest are
> more predictions of human behaviour. That said, the last percentage is
> probably the only one that anyone can give anything more than a wild
> guess at (which is why I didn't choose any stronger words than
> "plausible" to describe them).

I was not EFF lawyer and Serbia is an irrelevant place for copyright
and patent issues: we have 1 (one) person with PhD in copyright :)

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[geni]

2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <[hidden email]>:
> Well, I'm glad that we've cleared up that CC-BY-SA and link-back
> credit aren't irreconcilable after all.

Well I suppose that confirms you haven't really been paying attention.

> Now we're apparently moving on
> to the new topic: Do site-wide terms of use matter when determining
> what a license means in practice? I'm not going to spend a lot of time
> on this argument: Of course a site-wide policy page linked to from
> every page has relevance when determining the terms of use/re-use.

I assume you are trying to claim that wikipedia:copyrights is some
kind of TOS equiv.

Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canale_artificiale
http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanal
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_County,_West_Virginia
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB_(%D0%B3%D0%B8%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F)
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaal_(waterweg)

> But
> even a literal and unreasonably narrow focus on the GFDL doesn't
> support rigorous author attribution:
>
> 1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
> edits under the GFDL;
> 2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
> give credit on the page title;
> 3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;

Strangely there is no requirement that the history and the title page
not be the same thing.

> 4) The act of repeatedly contributing to Wikipedia under the GFDL can
> be argued to constitute the release from attribution which the GFDL
> allows for.

Please provide the section you think allows for it.

>
> The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
> attribution, as I've noted before. That's evident because the GFDL
> explicitly places reasonable limitations on the extent of author
> credit, to prevent the kinds of excessive bylines that we've been
> talking about.

Questionable. The GFDL is quite happy to see the title page extend
over several pages.

>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
> created without a page history while still giving author credit.

However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
history is required to include "new authors" among other things.

> In
> the context of a wiki, change histories were clearly not designed for
> purposes of author credit, as they are an incredibly annoying tool
> when you actually want to use them for this purpose.

The exception being if you want to use them in the context of the GFDL
which has a similar bunch of annoying requirements for it's history
section.

> I'm not making this argument:

Then please don't waste bandwidth with it.

>I am saying that we have established,
> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.

False. Look up history merging sometime.

>What is
> and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license. But the
> experience of contributing under a literal reading of the license
> alone doesn't support a claim to require stronger author attribution
> than what we're proposing, or even any author attribution at all.

Please state which section of the GFDL you are referring to here. I'm
fed up with playing guessing games.


--
geni

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[Erik Moeller-4]

2009/3/20 geni <[hidden email]>:
> Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
> take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:

Try the edit pages.

>> 1) Authors contributed acknowledging that they are licensing their
>> edits under the GFDL;
>> 2) The GFDL has an "at least five principal authors" requirement to
>> give credit on the page title;
>> 3) Wikipedia does not give credit on the page title;
>
> Strangely there is no requirement that the history and the title page
> not be the same thing.

There's no reason to assume that they are. The GFDL defines Title Page
as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given. You're in woolly territory to
begin with, which again re-affirms what I've been saying: we can
identify, through past practices, community-created terms of re-use,
the way that Wikipedia itself implements the GFDL, etc., a reasonable
baseline. Providing credit by linking to the page is a reasonable
baseline. And again, nowhere does a significantly greater expectation
for credit reasonably arise.

>>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
>> created without a page history while still giving author credit.
>
> However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
> history is required to include "new authors" among other things.

Irrelevant.

>>I am saying that we have established,
>> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
>> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.
>
> False. Look up history merging sometime.

Re-parse "minimally acceptable baseline".
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[Anthony-73]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 9:07 PM, Erik Moeller <[hidden email]> wrote:

> The change tracking history section has nothing to do with
> attribution, as I've noted before.


However, you're quite inconsistent on that point.  As one example among
many, you said earlier "Indeed, the only way in which contributors are
credited in Wikipedia is through a history of changes."

What is and isn't acceptable is defined through more than the license.


Like polling?  1 out of 5 Wikipedians polled expressed that they expect a
full list of authors to be listed in an offline copy.

"Attribution by link" is acceptable to most Wikipedians, but not to all.

> 4) The CC-BY-SA license grants the author the option to not supply a
> name for purposes of attribution. The CC-BY-SA license grants the
> author the option to supply a URL.

Are you claiming that Wikipedians have supplied such a URL?  What is the URL
they have supplied?  Must all reusers supply this URL, or is it optional for
them to do so?
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[Nikola Smolenski]

Дана Friday 20 March 2009 23:11:17 Michael Snow написа:

> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > Дана Friday 20 March 2009 06:59:35 Michael Snow написа:
> >> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >>> It is just your opinion that they have over-attributed; my opinion is
> >>> that their way of attribution is reasonable.
> >>
> >> Just because one method is reasonable does not mean that all others are
> >> unreasonable.
> >
> > Has anyone said that?
>
> Not necessarily in so many words. But for proponents of the
> "all-authors" approach to attribution, an inherent part of the subtext

I am not a proponent of an all-authors approach to attribution, and I do not
know anyone who is. As I have said multiple times, I believe that it is
possible through software means to determine a list of key authors (all
authors whose contributions are copyrightable) with sufficient accuracy, and
that such a list would be reasonable from the point of view of authors, and
also short enough that it would be reasonable from the point of view of
reusers, and should be recommended to reusers.

> By comparison, Erik only said that people had over-attributed
> historically. He didn't say it was unreasonable of them to
> over-attribute, nor do I think that should be implied in what he said.

When you are over-something, it means that you are doing more of it than you
should. Usually it is not reasonable to behave like that.

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[Nikola Smolenski]

Дана Saturday 21 March 2009 01:52:06 Erik Moeller написа:

> 2009/3/20 Nikola Smolenski <[hidden email]>:
> >> The fact that they may or may not be logged in is completely
> >> irrelevant if the terms and conditions clarify that their username has
> >> nothing to do with the option of supplying an Original Author name as
> >
> > But the terms and conditions do not clarify that, anywhere.
>
> So let's step back for a second. There is a claim that the legal code
> of CC-BY-SA cannot be reconciled with the notion of attributing via
> URL-linkback only. Do you agree that this claim is false? If the claim

Of course it is false. CC-BY-SA can be reconciled with attributing by URL only
(or even with not attributing at all), however in our practice it isn't.

> for a website under which authors contribute under such a model. If it
> is possible, then the final question is whether the current proposed
> terms for the edit page satisfy those conditions. I contend that they
> do, because they are sufficiently clear about the intended
> consequences (we don't need to spell out in detail how the terms and

I read them, and I know I still expected that in print my name would be there
somewhere.

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[geni]

2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <[hidden email]>:
> 2009/3/20 geni <[hidden email]>:
>> Now that argument is flawed on a number of grounds but I think I'll
>> take the easy option. Where is the link of the following pages:
>
> Try the edit pages.

Doesn't help you. Even those that do mention their equiv of
wikipedia:copyrights don't mention it in a context where it could be a
be considered a TOS and not all do. Then of course we have commons
who's Commons:Licensing doesn't help you at all.

Seriously Erik it bad enough that you are not paying attention but
suggesting I wouldn't check your claim is somewhat insulting.



> There's no reason to assume that they are.

Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page

>The GFDL defines Title Page
> as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
> preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
> that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
> be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
> exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
> 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
> interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
> Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.

Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
think you are helping your case.

>You're in woolly territory to
> begin with, which again re-affirms what I've been saying: we can
> identify, through past practices, community-created terms of re-use,
> the way that Wikipedia itself implements the GFDL, etc., a reasonable
> baseline. Providing credit by linking to the page is a reasonable
> baseline. And again, nowhere does a significantly greater expectation
> for credit reasonably arise.

The book version of the German wikipedia? The import export functions?

>>>It's also evident because a GFDL document can be
>>> created without a page history while still giving author credit.
>>
>> However it cannot be modified without creating a history and that
>> history is required to include "new authors" among other things.
>
> Irrelevant.

Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.


>>>I am saying that we have established,
>>> through historical practice, policy and debate, that crediting
>>> re-users via link or URL is a minimally acceptable baseline.
>>
>> False. Look up history merging sometime.
>
> Re-parse "minimally acceptable baseline".


Seeing how we react to cut and paste moves I would suggest your
minimally acceptable baseline isn't.


--
geni

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[Anthony-73]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 8:42 AM, geni <[hidden email]> wrote:

> 2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <[hidden email]>:
> > There's no reason to assume that they are.
>
> Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
> has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
> accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page
>

That's one way to look at it.  A more sane way would be that wikipedians
have collaborated on a number of documents which they agree to release to
third parties under the GFDL.

>The GFDL defines Title Page
> > as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
> > preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
> > that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
> > be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
> > exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
> > 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
> > interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
> > Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.
>
> Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
> think you are helping your case.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was blasted for saying this.  However, I don't see
how you can honestly claim otherwise.  Wikipedia doesn't follow the GFDL,
and never has.  On the other hand, that doesn't excuse third parties from
not following the GFDL.

Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
> to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.


At least it's honest.
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[Sue Gardner]

I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)

Jussi said he's only seen comments on the licensing issue from the staff, and not from the board. That may be true on this list, and it may be true for the specific piece of the conversation that interests him; I'm not sure.

But I do want to point out two things.

1) At its January meeting, the board developed and unanimously voted to approve, a statement in favour of migration. I think it was included in my January report that was published here on foundation-l a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong and the full statement's not in in that report, let me know and I'll send it to this list. (Or Domas will, or another board member will.)

2) Also at the January board meeting, the board made an explicit request to staff and board members, to publicly speak their minds on this issue.  Some people probably would do that anyway, but the board wanted to explicitly request it in this case.  Why?  Because the license migration issue is pretty complex, and not everyone understands it well.
Basically, people fall into three camps. 1., Those who are already knowledgeable, and have developed a position.  2., Those who aren't yet knowledgeable, but plan to read up in advance of the vote, in order to develop a position. And 3., those who don't plan to read up, and would rather trust others (board, staff, other volunteers) to do the research on their behalf, and to advise them. The board is encouraging knowledgeable staff and board members to express their opinions, as a service for those latter two groups.

That is why you're hearing a lot from Erik and Mike in the license migration threads. Because they're knowledgeable about the issue, and the board has asked them to share what they think :-)

Thanks,
Sue

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony <[hidden email]>

Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:41:58
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view


On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <[hidden email]
> wrote:

> The one loud voice here from the foundation *staff* (staff
> mind you, not the board of trustees) was espousing a very
> novel interpretation of the CC-BY-SA that would have quite
> spectacularly failed the "tentacles of evil" test of the Debian
> guidelines.
>

A view which the Creative Commons lawyers themselves have endorsed.

It's fortunate that the motives of this move came out before the decision
was made, because nothing is stopping CC from changing the license later.
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[M. Williamson]

So, the authors directly relate to give completely true form of
contributed to switch to assume your minimally acceptable is because
of share-alike, but you are contribution?

skype: node.ue



2009/3/21 Anthony <[hidden email]>:

> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 8:42 AM, geni <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> 2009/3/21 Erik Moeller <[hidden email]>:
>> > There's no reason to assume that they are.
>>
>> Actually there is see. Remember every wikipedian who has edited a page
>> has released a modified version of a GFDL document. I hope you are not
>> accusing them of violating copyright on a massive page
>>
>
> That's one way to look at it.  A more sane way would be that wikipedians
> have collaborated on a number of documents which they agree to release to
> third parties under the GFDL.
>
>>The GFDL defines Title Page
>> > as the text "near the most prominent appearance of the work's title,
>> > preceding the beginning of the body of the text". The interpretation
>> > that an arbitrarily titled link somewhere on the document (it used to
>> > be called "Older versions") to a difficult to navigate changelog
>> > exists to satisfy the author credit provisions of the GFDL (section
>> > 4.B, since you asked) is hardly more defensible than the
>> > interpretation that credit is given to the Wikipedia community ("From
>> > Wikipedia"), or that no credit is given.
>>
>> Given that neither of those would be legal under the GFDL I don't
>> think you are helping your case.
>
>
> Yeah, I'm pretty sure I was blasted for saying this.  However, I don't see
> how you can honestly claim otherwise.  Wikipedia doesn't follow the GFDL,
> and never has.  On the other hand, that doesn't excuse third parties from
> not following the GFDL.
>
> Given that only the terms of the GFDL will allow wikipedia to switch
>> to CC-BY-SA declaring said terms to be Irrelevant is at best foolish.
>
>
> At least it's honest.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> [hidden email]
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> I've been meaning to reply in this thread to what Jussi said. (Sorry to not reply inline; I'm on my Blackberry.)
>
>  
First of all, can I ask as a favor that you never again refer to me as
"Jussi". Jussi is my grandpa.
I am Jussi-Ville, or "J-V" (Jay-Vee) for short. Often also known by my
TLA "JVH" in contexts of
people like Mike Godwin, who date me from the early ages of the
internet. I am not offended,
but I do want to make it clear that referring to me as "Jussi" does have
significance.

> Jussi said he's only seen comments on the licensing issue from the staff, and not from the board. That may be true on this list, and it may be true for the specific piece of the conversation that interests him; I'm not sure.
>
> But I do want to point out two things.
>
> 1) At its January meeting, the board developed and unanimously voted to approve, a statement in favour of migration. I think it was included in my January report that was published here on foundation-l a few weeks ago. If I'm wrong and the full statement's not in in that report, let me know and I'll send it to this list. (Or Domas will, or another board member will.)
>
> 2) Also at the January board meeting, the board made an explicit request to staff and board members, to publicly speak their minds on this issue.  Some people probably would do that anyway, but the board wanted to explicitly request it in this case.  Why?  Because the license migration issue is pretty complex, and not everyone understands it well.
> Basically, people fall into three camps. 1., Those who are already knowledgeable, and have developed a position.  2., Those who aren't yet knowledgeable, but plan to read up in advance of the vote, in order to develop a position. And 3., those who don't plan to read up, and would rather trust others (board, staff, other volunteers) to do the research on their behalf, and to advise them. The board is encouraging knowledgeable staff and board members to express their opinions, as a service for those latter two groups.
>
> That is why you're hearing a lot from Erik and Mike in the license migration threads. Because they're knowledgeable about the issue, and the board has asked them to share what they think :-)
>
>  

These are valuable words. I genuinely trust that what has been generated
has not been
only heat, but there has been some illumination shed on the issues as well.

Personally as I have said before I am somewhat wanly satisfied with
where we stand at
the moment, provided there will be no back-sliding later. In an ideal
world I would prefer
multi-licensing under *all* localized versions of CC-BY-SA 3.0 and a TOS
that would
pre-emptively require assent to multi-licensing under any future
localized versions. That
way the issue would squarely land on the re-user, and not on who adds
material. That
is the editor wouldn't have to choose the jurisdictive limits of their
licensing, but the
one creating a work outside wikimedia would have to do so. But it isn't
clear that we
do live in an ideal world. ;-)


Yours, no offense taken nor hopefully given,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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